They're not for everyone, but small towns can be really fun

Hangin' at Orsak's in Fayetteville.

We're back in Houston after a weekend in the country. We definitely consider Fayetteville, Warrenton, Round Top, etc. to be the country. We weren't looking for anything special at the antique markets, but just strolling around.

Malburger Farms was terrific, as always. I found a nice piece of vintage fabric and Mr. B found some damask napkins for our collection. Then we went to Round Top, which was a total mess. I wanted to go to The Big Red Barn, but it took us almost an hour to make the five mile drive from Marburger Farms to Round Top. There's no telling how long it would have taken us to drive another five miles from Round Top to The Big Red Barn. Royer's was closed so we ate dinner in Fayetteville where we were staying at the Market Street Inn (very nice). Sunday we went to Warrenton, which is always a crap-shoot flea market (at best). I found two more pieces of vintage fabric there. As you can read, there were no big expenditures during the weekend.

Today I'm celebrating small towns. My family lived for five years in Alice, Texas, which is a small town about 45 miles west of Corpus Christi. I loved it there and cried for months when we moved back to Houston just before I started high school. In Alice, my best friends lived just down the street. We rode our bicycles everywhere in town. Friday nights were football games at Alice High School. There were county fairs, homecoming and holiday parades, and community swimming pools. The junior high reading teacher and an elementary school teacher left their families and ran away together. What a scandal! Five high school senior boys got drunk, crashed into the elementary school, and died. What a tragedy! As much as I loved Alice, my life would be so different (and not in a good way) if we hadn't moved back to Houston. Staying in Alice, I probably wouldn't have gone to college and discovered creative writing, which has been one of the passions and joys of my life. Life was simpler in Alice, but opportunities were fewer and exposure to the arts was pretty much non-existent.